Before and After You
by Itsaflashdancequote
Summary: Francessca puts herself ahead of her family.


p class="font_9" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 14px; line-height: normal; font-family: din-next-w01-light, din-next-w02-light, din-next-w10-light, sans-serif; color: #605e5e;"In that moment, Francesca gathered up all the courage she had never used before, as a young girl in Italy, and now as an aging woman in Iowa. She gathered all the courage she would need for the rest of her life, away from here. In her head, she said her goodbyes to Michael, silently praying he would go on with football when she was gone. And Carolyn, who cried when they left for the fair because she would have to leave her mother. Last was Richard, who she would have to say goodbye to in person. Richard, the husband who had taken her from her lonely life in Italy. The husband she had spent the last 25 years with. She would have to say goodbye to his face. Francesca inhaled deeply, and placed her hand on the handle of the old Fords door. "You okay, Frannie?" Richard asked as she slowly let out her breath./p  
p class="font_8" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 15px; line-height: normal; font-family: din-next-w01-light, din-next-w02-light, din-next-w10-light, sans-serif; color: #605e5e;" /p  
p class="font_9" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 14px; line-height: normal; font-family: din-next-w01-light, din-next-w02-light, din-next-w10-light, sans-serif; color: #605e5e;""No, I'm not. I'm sorry Richard." Francesca said these words with a foreign certainty. And as Richard opened his mouth, she opened the door. "I'm so sorry. Goodbye." Before her husband could say anything, ask any questions, command her back into the truck, she ran through the rain to the green pickup. Francesca Johnson, wife of Richard Johnson, the farmer from Madison County, Iowa, pounded on the passenger window. She watched as Robert Kincaid, adventurer and photographer from Bellingham, Washington, looked to the side. She watched as he saw her, standing there in the rain, outside his truck. He leaned across and unlocked the door. Francesca climbed quickly into the truck and locked her eyes on the road ahead, refusing to turn around, refusing to see Richard again. "I changed my mind," she said quietly to Robert. "I love you, and I want to go with you. Wherever you go." Robert didn't seemed shocked. He didn't seem excited or confused or satisfied. He seemed determined; if that was the word./p  
p class="font_8" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 15px; line-height: normal; font-family: din-next-w01-light, din-next-w02-light, din-next-w10-light, sans-serif; color: #605e5e;" /p  
p class="font_9" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 14px; line-height: normal; font-family: din-next-w01-light, din-next-w02-light, din-next-w10-light, sans-serif; color: #605e5e;""Would you like me to drive you back home first? I can explain everything. At least I think I can. To your husband, and to your children." Francesca shook her head. She wouldn't be able to let go if she went back. She would never be able to leave. Not if Carolyn cried or Michael begged or Richard demanded that she stay. Robert understood. He understood everything Francesca said, without her ever having to say it first. That was just one reason of millions why she loved the last of the cowboys. As Robert Kincaid drove out of the intersection, Francesca dared to look in the rearview mirror at her husband in the old Ford truck behind them. Tears began to pour from her eyes as she saw the betrayal on Richard's face./p  
p class="font_8" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 15px; line-height: normal; font-family: din-next-w01-light, din-next-w02-light, din-next-w10-light, sans-serif; color: #605e5e;" /p  
p class="font_9" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: 0px 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 14px; line-height: normal; font-family: din-next-w01-light, din-next-w02-light, din-next-w10-light, sans-serif; color: #605e5e;"After that day, Francesca never again cried over her decision to leave Madison County, Iowa. She wrote a letter to Richard, Michael, and Carolyn the day after she left, attempting to explain why she had left. Michael and Carolyn wrote her back when they could, and they continued to write their mother for years. Francesca always answered the letters she received from her children as soon as she read them, which was sometimes months from the time they were sent. She traveled with Robert, all over the world. Wherever his job with National Geographic took him, he went, and Francesca followed. She tried to ignore the obvious, but deep down inside her somewhere, where her thoughts and feelings could barely reach, she knew she enjoye her life with Robert more than she had her life with Richard. Not that she hadn't enjoyed her life with Richard, but the life she lived with this mysterious maker of photos was everything she had dreamt of as a child in Naples. On a shoot in Australia, a couple years after Francesca stepped out of the Ford and into the rain, Robert told her she had been born with a wandering soul. She knew that no one but Robert had a soul equally as dissatisfied with being stationary. Always in one place, never a change in routine. That sort of environment is the same as the one Francesca had spent so much of her life in. Francesca traveled with Robert until the day they both died. They were both very old, and they died together, Robert Kincaid the Photographer from Washington just minutes before Francesca Johnson, wandering soul from Italy./p 


End file.
